President Obama's Beliefs and Birthplace: Is Democracy Fated to Fade into Opinocracy?

It's one thing for the fate of elected officials to be decided by vote counts, quite another for matters of fact to be decided the same way.

No, what's true is not determined by how many people believe it is true. And if some people believe of something true that it is false, that does not make it partly false. When it comes to facts, opinion is just opinion, no matter how widely or strongly held.

Maybe the reason the two are getting conflated in the media-magnified opinocracy that seems destined to become the successor of democracy is that the fate of elected officials depends on voters' opinions on facts.

What is surprising is that in a world now equipped to be incomparably better informed than ever before, it is the weight of opinion, not evidence and reason, that is calling the cards.